


Tomorrow is another day (Run Boy Run)

by mandsangelfox



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Feels, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Michael is an unreliable narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 21:47:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19118338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mandsangelfox/pseuds/mandsangelfox
Summary: Now he has the chance to reach that place. The final piece in the long-standing puzzle that is Michael Guerin’s life is in his hands and yet he can’t move.His feet are made of lead and it’s as though Earth’s gravity is holding him to ransom at the cost of his freedom. He also knows it isn’t just the gravity of the Earth rooting him to the planet he knows isn’t his own.





	Tomorrow is another day (Run Boy Run)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [estel_willow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/estel_willow/pseuds/estel_willow) for her amazing Beta'ing work and support :)

Running. 

It’s the one thing he’s good at since he was a kid. It’s consistent, the only thing he knows how to do right. It’s the one thing he doesn’t second guess; just pedal to the metal and go. 

It’s simple. And he likes it that way. 

Only, he’s been running so long that he’s lost sight of what he’s running towards. In his head, he says it’s something better and somewhere to belong but then he proves himself a liar and delusional because now? Now he has the chance to reach that place. The final piece in the long-standing puzzle that is Michael Guerin’s life is in his hands and yet he can’t move. 

His feet are made of lead and it’s as though Earth’s gravity is holding him to ransom at the cost of his freedom. He also knows it isn’t just the gravity of the Earth rooting him to the planet he knows isn’t his own. It’s something, or rather somebody, else who exerts his own form of gravity in ways he isn’t even aware of. 

The problem is that he’s been running so long that by the time he figures out that what he’s running to isn’t actually all that far away, they’re already done with him and over it all. They’ve hurt one another too many times, with the final nail in the figurative coffin when running meant going to Maria, ruining what chance there might have been for reconciliation. 

So now he feels his only choice is to run, to strap that final piece to some sort of vehicle and take off. Never look back. It’s not like he’ll be missed. Everybody else in his life might even be better off; one less complication in a long line of complications. Plus one less alien, bonus points for everybody involved. Not that life is a game show with their fates subject to the spin of a wheel but, quite honestly, that’s sometimes how it feels for Michael. That life’s this one big cosmic joke and he’s the punchline but the guy telling it has a bad case of the premature ejaculations and so it happens sooner than it should and more often than it probably ought to.

Of course, running isn’t as easy as it should be, as easy as it has been, like a walk in the park, and that’s more frustrating than Michael wants to admit. The rattling rumble of his power simmering quietly under his warped surface is further evidence that, as much as he wants to, he can’t run, not the same way he has in the past. It’s not that simple. Possibly, it might never be that simple again.

Damn Alex Manes and his stupid giving him hope, for actually sticking around and not taking the easy way out like all the other times when they hit any sort of bump in their long twisted road. Both of their lives would be so much easier if Alex had done what he was good at and alked away but then Michael’s no better; he’s spent so long running that he lost sight of what’s important and how some things are much closer than they appear. 

Happiness, for one thing.

Academically speaking, he knows the meaning of ‘happy’. Realistically, he’s never known what it is to be _happy_ ; it’s this alien concept (pun intended) that’s completely foreign to him and more frightening that it has any right to be. He’s known it in these brief electrifying and consuming moments that make the fall so much harder, it’s a crash landing, like he’s said before, and each time it takes more of what little strength he has left to smooth out his jagged edges. 

If Michael was the sort to believe in fate, or what-the-fuck-ever Max got all doe-eyed about when it came to Liz, he’d say that Alex was _his_ Person and there was no escaping that. He could try all he want and oh how he _tried_ , now and in the past, and that should tell him something but Michael’s stubborn, he’s always been stubborn, it’s one of his many character flaws. Honestly, he has so many he stopped counting. 

He should run, it’s for the best and it’s the right decision for everybody involved, and yet he does the exact opposite. Or rather, he _runs_ , but in the opposite direction. He runs towards instead of away and everything in him is screaming, telling him to stop being such a dumbass, to just pick up and hit the road be it here on Earth or out there in the great unknown, but he isn’t listening.

Michael hasn’t been listening for the last couple of miles. 

Miles that take him to the Valenti cabin, to Alex’s home, to the place where he shouldn’t be and has spent the last however long avoiding and pretending like he isn’t breaking inside. He feels like glass, splintering, breaking and all it would take is the smallest push and he knows that he’ll shatter completely. He’d once said that if anybody was going to destroy him then it might as well be Alex but, truth be told, Alex’s already done that, but not in the ways he might imagine. He’s tried to move on, tried to push his feelings aside, and ignore them, act like Alex means nothing but he means the _most_ and that scares the living crap out of Michael. He’s never really been loved and he knows Alex hasn’t either but sometimes he wonders if the reason they gravitated towards one another was because they’d had nobody else and their endless screaming into the void finally had an echo.

It feels like it takes him decades or. since he’s being particularly dramatic, centuries to finally summon up the nerve to knock. He has no idea how he’ll be received as, in true cowardly fashion, he’s given Alex the slip at every given opportunity. The door, he notes idly, doesn’t have a peephole so in some ways, he’s catching Alex off-guard because he has no idea that it’s Michael on the other side but Michael thinks that’s probably a good thing; if he knew, there’s every chance the door wouldn’t even open.

Why would it after what he did and with whom?

Okay, yeah, this is a bad idea.

Michael loses his nerve and turns to leave but then the door opens and he hears a soft uncertain, “...Michael?”

Well, crap. 

It’s too late to run away now so he has to do the one thing he hasn’t been able to do since Caulfield: face Alex. He has to breathe, that’s important too, but Michael’s apparently forgotten how to do that. Alex has that effect: like he’s pulling the air from his chest and the only time Michael can fill his lungs is when he’s kissing Alex. That probably isn’t healthy but it is what it is and he’s gone so long not explaining it that he doesn’t think now, of all the times, is when he should try. Alex said they never talked all that much, and they really didn’t; they were too busy trying to bury themselves in one another until they drowned and everything else ceased to matter. Again, definitely not healthy, but they’re both red-blooded healthy men and Alex is hot so, really, how could Michael be expected to keep his hands to himself?

He does that thing he does whenever he’s around Alex, he sucks in a breath and pushes it out slow, mentally preparing and bracing himself. He turns and locks caramel on dark chocolate and he’s got this whole speech planned out, it’s truly _epic_ , but it escapes him and all Michael can do is surge forward until his hands are clinging to Alex like he’s quite literally the only thing keeping him buoyant on a turbulent sea and his lips are crashing into him the same way waves break over the beach. 

“M’sorry,” Michael manages to mumble hurriedly against Alex’s mouth in what feels like a hushed guilty confession. “I said some shit and did some really dumb things, I just-” Before he can say anything else Alex is giving him **that** look and he’s pulling him in for another kiss that tastes an awful lot like forgiveness. But there’s something else hanging over them and Michael feels it, so he knows Alex does as well. “I never stopped, you know?”

He shakes his head, teeth on his lower lip, eyes flitting over the sharp planes of Alex’s face as eye contact is suddenly really fucking difficult. Inexplicably so. He feels splayed, torn open, vulnerable and all kinds of insecure. This is the closest he’s ever come to saying the words. He’s still got a long way to go before he can speak them out loud and maybe he never will, maybe he’s just _too_ broken, but he hopes it’s enough and Alex can, with all his skills, decipher what Michael Guerin is trying to say to him.

“Yeah, Guerin, I know. I was just waiting for you to catch up.”

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Michael lets out a small laugh and rolls his eyes. “For a smart guy, I can be really fucking dumb at times.”

Alex snorts softly, but not in a way that might cause Michael to think he’s being made fun of. He learned a long time ago that it’s just a sure fire way of everything that should be good and whole going down in flames very quickly. “Well, I didn’t want to say anything but now that you mention-”

Of course, whatever else he might have said was very quickly cut off by the demanding press of Michael’s mouth on his and the rest, as they said, becomes history, water under the bridge. This is the start of a new beginning.

A new beginning that involves Michael Guerin running towards the very thing that scared him instead of away from it.


End file.
